Right, it’s time for our annual full-year vehicle sales performance report. The Malaysian Automotive Association (MAA) has finally released complete sales data for 2016, and as expected, higher prices as a result of an unfavourable foreign exchange and tightening hire purchase loan approvals has tempered market sentiment, resulting in a significantly lower Total Industry Volume (TIV) than in 2015.

Last year’s figure sits at 580,124 units, down 13% or 86,553 units from the record-breaking 666,677 units the year before. The association says that the decline follows six years of consecutive growth, and that it’s the first time the TIV has dipped below the 600,000 unit mark since 2009.

Naturally, the sales dip means that it has been a tough year for most of the automotive industry, particularly for the mainstream brands. However, a few players did make some gains in terms of market share, while premium brands have demonstrated a surprisingly strong showing.

At the top of the pile, of course, sits Perodua – buoyed by the launch of the new Bezza sedan, the second national carmaker managed to keep itself above the 200,000 unit mark despite sales being down 3.9% down 2015’s record 213,307 units, at 207,110 units. More importantly, the company’s market share has grown from 32% to 35.7%, its highest ever.

Surprise, surprise, the second most popular brand in Malaysia is Honda, even though sales have slid 3.2% from 94,902 units to 91,830 units. Its market share has also climbed from 14.2% to 15.8%; overall, it’s an impressive result from the Japanese carmaker, which launched the Civic and facelifted Accord last year.

Honda’s sales success came at the expense of Proton, which slid from its customary second place in spite of launching four new models last year. Sales have dropped a staggering 29.2% from 102,174 units to 72,290 units, while its market share has also fallen from 15.3% to 12.5%.

But Proton’s slump has nothing on Toyota’s – previously neck-and-neck with Honda, its sales have dropped by a massive 32% to 63,757 units, while its market share has dropped from 14.1% to just 11.0%. While it still leads the commercial vehicle sector, the company delivered just 19,171 units last year, down from 28,465 units; its CV market share has also shrunk from 37.8% to 29.2% – even after the launch of the new Hilux.

Nissan retains its perennial fifth spot – although sales have fallen 13.8% to 40,706 units, it keeps its market share at 7%. The company is also third in commercial market with a share of 11.4%. Meanwhile, Isuzu had a good year, with sales climbing 1.3% to 12,818 units and its market share rising from 1.9% to 2.2%; it also keeps its second spot in the commercial vehicle market, with a market share of 19.1%, up from 16.2%.

In seventh sits Mazda, sales of which have fallen 12.8% from 14,325 units to 12,493 units; its market share stays nearly identical at 2.2%. In the premium sector, Mercedes-Benz blew through 2016 with a massive product blitz, reflected by a record-breaking 12,017 units in sales, up 8.9% from 11,034 units in 2015. Its market share has also increased from 1.7% to 2.1%, making it the eighth most popular brand in Malaysia.

The three-pointed star’s sterling performance was more than enough to deny BMW of the premium market crown on its centenary. Even so, Munich scored a record year for itself by selling a round 9,000 units, up 19.8% from 7,515 units in 2015; its 1.6% market share (up from 1.1% the year before) means that it rounds off the top 10 in the popularity stakes.

Elsewhere, it’s been a good year for Subaru (up 52.5% to 3,873 units), Volvo (up 55.4% to 934 units) and Renault (up 25.3% to 599 units), while Ford (down 34% to 8,001 units), Peugeot (down 42.7% to 1,710 units) and Lexus (down 35.6% to 1,353 units) have seen their sales nosedive considerably.

After trying to pursue a career in product design, Jonathan Lee decided to make the sideways jump into the world of car journalism instead. He therefore appreciates the aesthetic appeal of a car, but for him, the driving experience is still second to none.

Even with the Perdana, Persona, Saga & Ertiga, Proton still lost almost 30% in sale units & 12.5% in market share. Meanwhile P2 lost 2.9% units but gained a massive 35.7% in market share and they only had 1 new car.

I am quite shocked at Proton’s figure of 72,000. I thought they said they had so many orders for Saga, like 20,000 orders and Persona also another 20,000 orders.

What happened? Betul ke got so many orders? Or is this another tactic like how the old CEO of Proton said they had so much of demand for Iriz that they had order backlog up to 1 year and Proton could not keep up with demand.

Betul ke Proton’s figures when they announce?

How long can the rakyat sustain a loss making company? Losing RM4 million per day.

Both Proton and Perodua increased their prices quite a bit last year. Blaming the Ringgit. But then again, what is the purpose of creating a local car with local content in the first place?

Perodua increase of RM2773 on their Axia yesterday is a lot of money to the lower income group. This is not fair as the National Car company was created to give cheap cars to Malaysia.

This is why Japanese cars went 3 fold in price from the 90s to 2016. Before Proton and Perodua, one can buy a good brand new Japanese car for RM20k. But Mahathir said, he was going to create Proton and Perodua that will give Malaysians a cheaper and better car than the Japs. We trusted Mahathir.

After that, to protect Proton and Perodua, Government imposed heavy taxes and increased the prices of Japanese cars 3 fold and it became unaffordable.

Again, the spirit of a establishing 2 local national car companies was to give cheap cars to Malaysians. By the way, my first Saga I bought was RM18k in cash. Brand new car. Proton Saga 1.3S

So, the past 30 years, Malaysians had to rely on either Proton or Perodua as we, the rakyat, allowed the Government to protect Perodua and Proton. It is unfair to raise prices since we have supported Proton and Perodua all these years and conveniently blame the Ringgit dropping. After all 30 years still cannot have fully local content? Engineers at Proton and Perodua sleeping?

Secondly and more importantly, the CEO of Perodua, which is GLC UMW owned, YB Aminar should ask his big boss Najib to honour his promise to reduce car prices by 30%.

Already, Malaysians pay the highest car prices in the world. Aminar should ask Najib where is this 30% car price reduction Najib promised the rakyat 4 years ago.

By right, the Axia should not be raised by RM2774 but be reduced by RM7500 (30% price reduction promise)

The rakyat is suffering. It is up to the 2 famous CEOs, Aminar and Kenali from Proton to ask their big boss to honour the 30% price reduction promise.

After all, if national car company cannot approach Najib for this, how else are the local Jap car companies going to approach Jib for this?

2017,Proton will sell only 50,000 units.
The beauty is there is not even ONE STAFF WHO got the golden handshake.
JUst thro them a BIG AP to bring in cars like NAZA.
No need 2 factories that has the capacity to produce 1 million cars but can only sell 50,000 units.
Proton…..your hardcore supporters have migrated to Perodua.They cant be waiting for new engines to replace the campro,can they?
It is GAME OVER.
tHE RAKYAT WILL BE BURDENED with another rm1.5 Billion bailout very soon.How pathetic.

If I was Proton management, I will be so shy to see Perodua doing so well. Proton is much older, started about 10 years earlier than Perodua, and yet, they struggle to sell hardly 72,000 cars.

So shameful. Perodua can sell 207,100 cars. And yet they don’t ask RM1.5 bil loan and suck money a total of RM15 billion since 90s.

How a young company can sell 3x the number of cars compared to Proton? And to make matters worse, Proton supplies cars to Gomen departments and agencies. Berpulul puluh ribu cars are ordered by Polis, PDRM, Kastam, Immigresen, TUDM, TLDM, Pos Malaysia etc etc.

I think if Perodua also supplied cars to gomen departments, sales would be 300,000!

Congrats Perodua!!!! Proton? Well maybe time to close shop. Last year 105,000 cars. This year, despite 4 new cars launched, it goes down to 72,000.
Something must be very wrong.

good models but bad timing. the best is launching persona first (1st quater), followed by saga (mid year) and a D-class perdana at 3rd quater). hot cars (cheaper and more fuel saver) took a very long que to deliver, due to bad projection for premium model productions.

look at proton. all the hype and bla bla in 2016 with four new cars and still barely in number 3. what is the use of keeping this company alive and pump money to it? It shows how incompetent Proton bosses are. inspite of all the bad sales and losing market share to P2, Honda and soon To Toyota. they still pocket 5 figure salaries and talk like a multi billion dollar corp. shame on Proton.

A big reduction in Toyota sales. Nothing to be surprised off considering they have very few models in their line up and all them are unattractive – overpriced, underpowered NA engine, CVT transmission and lacking safety features.

The only answer to UMW Toyota is – please stop selling Corolla SEG 1997 with the skin of Avanza, Rush, Vios, Altis, Hilux, Innova, Sienta. Oh wait, they all drive far worse than the original Corolla SEG and felt cheaper.

Why SEG 1997? Because it had ABS and 2 airbags – and it was freaking 20yrs ago!!

Tahniah proton and umw toyota for the massive failures in 2016. you both deserve it.

but between the both of you, umw has a better chance to get 3rd place if they bertaubat and insaf by properly speccing, pricing and marketing their cars. as for proton, good luck trying to get 10% market share.

People fed up with fuel guzzler, laggy, noisy Campro + Punch CVT. No amount of tuning and improvement can salvage its reputation.

It’s like VW and DSG. Just see the word “dry-clutch DSG”, immediately we laugh at who’d be dumb enough to be fooled by VW. No matter what VW do, no one wants to believe in dry clutch DSG anymore.

Instead, Proton waste away money on designers, who are proven to be irrelevant to help convince people to part their hard earned money.

So-called “petrolheads” here may laugh at Bezza ugly tonggek buntut, but do people care? People see it has Dual VVT-i, spacious, practical boot space, that’s all it needs to buy their trust. Perodua will be able to meet volume, good cashflow, good pay record with suppliers, maintain quality, profitable, pay tax to membina negara and to subsidise operations of syok sendiri Proton.

People want Dual VVT-i, to save fuel, maintenance cost, not Proton wording on headlamp or taillamp.

But never mind, Proton about to be sold to foreigners anyway. My vote on Geely so they can truly become Volvo of Asia.

I really hope Subaru climbs and overtakes Hyundai and Kia this year. That will be a fantastic achivement from just 3 years ago.

I can see Kia is trying quite hard to win customers recently but Hyundai on the other hand is basically a limp sausage with an arrogant air about them. Can you believe they still haven’t brought in the facelifted Santa Fe yet? That Dato still busy updating his own social media is it?

They can grow their face-lifted XV and Forester sales this year with one eye on possible CKD of the new Impreza. Their Levorg and Outback I am not confident, the BRZ is due for a facelift but priced to close to the WRX, which is also out of the masses’ reach.

Proton market will become like this. Proton needs to rebadge a lot of cars and sell at very attractive price to maintain even a 20% market share. I suggest Proton to launch another 4 models all of which are rebadge Japanese or Korean cars. If not Proton can declare bankruptcy. Anyway it’s technically already bankrupt without the Gomen 1.5 billion loan money.
2016: 12.5%
2017: 9.3%
2018: 5.1%
2019: 1.2%

Good to see Toyota is suffering as UMW has been in the comfort zone way too long. Under spec over priced and ultra conservative! Even Previa and Alphard combined sales will not even match Veilfire 1 model total grey import!

Malaysians have no more love for Proton. 30+ years of being cheated, given inferior cars, spending our tax monies with little returns, unable to compete without protection locally, unable to build an export market …. It is like having a useless 30 year old child who can’t independently earn money, live on his own, still relying on parents for his pocket money, living with parents & worse of all, unable to hold down a job.

“But Proton’s slump has nothing on Toyota’s – previously neck-and-neck with Honda, its sales have dropped by a massive 32% to 63,757 units, while its market share has dropped from 14.1% to just 11.0%. While it still leads the commercial vehicle sector, the company delivered just 19,171 units last year, down from 28,465 units; its CV market share has also shrunk from 37.8% to 29.2% – even after the launch of the new Hilux.”

Great to see that Toyota car sales drop and hopefully they will be continue dropping and all this thanks to their poor unprofessional sales advisor as well and incompetence service technician who had successfully pissed lots of his customer and stopping them to continue supporting them.. To me their products are fine but being sold by bunch of foolish people and service by stupid idiot technician.. I bought a Sienta and has been pissed off since I need to place 3 times order and cancel twice and now being play a fool by their service advisor because the car was knock by a truck end last month

told you guys way earlier that toyota is not moving forward. it’s moving backwards. with the underspec, expensive price and old tech, they are now ripping what they have sowed after many years of being proud and arrogant.

Any idea what is the sales number so for toyota new MPV?. Honda BRV price under cut it by about RM7K. Toyota new MPV has become toyota own new FREED?. Honda announced that BRV booking is beyond expectation!. True?.

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